This invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for collecting and dispensing cooking oil and grease for recycling or resale and particularly to apparatus and methods for collecting and dispensing cooking oil to and from fryer vats in restaurants and other industrial users of cooking oil for recycling or resale.
Restaurants typically fry potatoes, chicken and other food products in approximately 5 gallon frying vats at temperatures of about 375 degrees. The cooking oil or grease used in the fry vat typically weighs about 8 pounds per gallon. When it is necessary to replace the cooking oil or grease in the frying vat, personnel ordinarily manually pour the hot oil into containers, carry it out to a larger container in a refuse area for removal from the restaurant. It may be readily seen that manually transferring about 30-40 pounds of oil from each fryer at 375 degrees from the frying vat into another container and transporting it outside manually to deposit it in another receptacle is a dangerous task, which exposes personnel to risk of injury, creates health hazards and which concomitantly includes a risk of damage to expensive restaurant equipment.
In a typical collection system, a restaurant would place several of the containers outside the restaurant so that a delivery truck operator could conveniently collect the full drums of used oil or vacuum pump a fixed container. The heavy drums containing 30 gallons or more of oil are ordinarily manually handled to place them in a vehicle, such as a truck for transport to a collection center. Recycled cooking oil has many applications, including fat feed for pets and cattle and, reuse for cooking where permitted by local health codes and, therefore, has significant economic value.
Similarly, after emptying a frying vat, personnel ordinarily manually add new cooking oil from containers into the frying vat, which is always inconvenient and which also involves risks of splashing spillage and injury to restaurant personnel.
In addition to the safety considerations and inconvenience of manually emptying the hot frying vats into the barrel or fixed containers, it has been found that many restaurants have difficulty in maintaining sufficient security to prevent theft of the filled containers and its contents before authorized personnel are able to retrieve them for transport to the collection center. Since the value of the oil awaiting pickup for recycling at a single restaurant can be several hundred dollars per month, restaurant operators are motivated to provide adequate security to prevent theft. Thus, there exists a substantial need in the art for an improved apparatus and method which permits rapid and safe removal and storage of spent cooking grease and oil as well as rapid and safe distribution of new cooking oil into fryer vats.